Latinos have lived within the present boundary of the United States before the U.S. existed and were here a century before the Anglos waded ashore at Plymouth Rock. Lately the Latino tide has risen, making them America’s major minority and sparking controversies over immigration. Meanwhile, a new generation of Latinos has become important in Hollywood, including actors Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas and directors Guillermo del Torro and Alfonso Cuaron.
Who knew that Latinos were a dominant presence in American movies from the beginning of Hollywood through the end of the silent era? Recovering this largely forgotten chapter in cinema history is the greatest accomplishment of Clara Rodriguez’s book Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood (Oxford University Press). In her early chapters, the Fordham University sociology professor looks at the careers of such overlooked early actors as Anita Page (born Anita Pomares), Barry Norton (born Alfredo Biraben) and Pedro de Cordoba. “Latin stars” as they were called in the 1920s played opposite Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Gary Cooper and Mae West “with equal or sometimes higher billing.”
Making extensive use of early movie magazines as sources, Rodriguez unearths many interesting lines of discussion. In the 1920s “Latin” encompassed Italian as well as Spanish and Portuguese speakers. Rudolf Valentino was billed as a “Latin lover,” as was the Spanish born Antonio Moreno. Paradoxically, some actors of Latino background Anglicized their names while other actors from elsewhere Latinized themselves. The Austrian Jacob Krantz became Ricardo Cortez from the ‘20s through the end of his Hollywood career in the ‘50s. In Los Angeles many restaurants and public places hung “White Only” signs at a time when “a dash of Spanish ancestry” was considered romantic and alluring by a significant segment of the American public. Not surprisingly, Latino actors who claimed an aristocratic pedigree or a family tree with Northern European branches rose higher than those of largely Native American stock.
Occasionally, Rodriguez is uncritical in her reading of the old fan magazines. She reports with a straight face that Anita Page received over 100 fan letters and a marriage proposal from Mussolini—a notion concocted by a Hollywood publicist if ever there was. Mostly her history is correct. Rodriguez rightly connects the cyclical rise and fall and resurgence of Latinos in Hollywood with larger social and political issues. Latinos receded from view during the Great Depression of the 1930s when many Mexicans working in the U.S. were forcibly returned home. They regained the spotlight in the 1940s when Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” sought to enlist Latin America in the struggle against the Axis.
Rodriguez is best when chronicling the story of Latinos in Hollywood within a historical context. She is weaker when playing critic. Her reductive interpretation of West Side Story (1961) attacks the film for perpetuating ethnic stereotypes but is oblivious to the movie’s role in elevating Puerto Ricans from the shadows to the center stage. Sure, West Side Story applies the Madonna-whore dichotomy to its Puerto Rican women, the virginal Maria (Natalie Wood in brown makeup) and the spitfire Anita, but the Madonna-whore polarity is a widespread psychological affliction of men from many backgrounds and has never been confined by Hollywood to depictions of Latinas.
Rodriguez also treads on thin surfaces in her view that the movie’s white gang, the Jets, is depicted more favorably than the Puerto Rican Sharks. That certainly wasn’t how contemporary viewers and critics interpreted this 20th century reinvention of Romeo and Juliet. For evidence of racial bias, Rodriguez even points to the white tennis shoes worn by the Jets and the Sharks’ black ones. Well, for many people, black tennis shoes were much cooler than preppy white tennies in 1961. They’re still cooler today.
